The argument for why this is doable is rather simple. The Early Lunar Access(ELA) [1] proposal of the early 90's, which deserves to be better known actually, suggested that by using a lightweight 2-man capsule and all cryogenic in-space stages that a manned lunar lander mission could be mounted with only 52 mT required to LEO, half that previously thought necessary. The only technical complaint about its feasibility was that it required a crew capsule of only 3 mT empty weight. But the kicker is NASA is planning a Space Exploration Vehicle(SEV) [2] at that same low 3 mT empty weight. So the SLS at a 70 mT payload capability will be able to launch such a mission using the SEV as crew capsule following the ELA architecture with plenty of margin.

Apollo was a flag-planting mission for political gain that was designed to be a simple as possible to maximise the chances of success with the relatively primitive technology of the 1960's. We now again require a spectacle for political reasons and we're still not willing to spend enough money to do real space exploration (even if that would be much cheaper now than in the 1960s), and it turns out that simple also means cheap, especially if you've done it before. So here we are.

_________________Say, can you feel the thunder in the air? Just like the moment ’fore it hits – then it’s everywhereWhat is this spell we’re under, do you care? The might to rise above it is now within your sphereMachinae Supremacy – Sid Icarus

NASA managers have since created an option for a return, listed as a Lunar Surface Sortie (LSS) mission via the Exploration Systems Development Division (ESD) Concept Of Operations (Con Ops) document (L2), allowing it to become a Design Reference Mission (DRM) alternative, potentially at the expense of a NEA mission in the early to mid 2020s.While this option remains on the cards, source information acquired by L2 this week revealed plans for a “game-changing” announcement as early as December that a new commercial space company intends to send commercial astronauts to the moon by 2020.According to the information, the effort is led by a group of high profile individuals from the aerospace industry and backed by some big money and foreign investors. The company intends to use “existing or soon to be existing launch vehicles, spacecraft, upper stages, and technologies” to start their commercial manned lunar campaign.The details point to the specific use of US vehicles, with a basic architecture to utilize multiple launches to assemble spacecraft in Low Earth Orbit (LEO). The details make direct reference to the potential use of propellant depots and fuel transfer technology.Additional notes include a plan to park elements in lunar orbit, staging a small lunar lander that would transport two commercial astronauts to the surface for short stays. http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2012/11/ ... unar-base/

I first thought the commercial plan was going to follow the Early Lunar Access (ELA) proposal because it mentioned landing two commercial passengers on the Moon. ELA was a lightweight architecture that used a small two-man capsule:

But it is unlikely in the commercial plan they mean the passengers are to fly alone without one or more professional pilots. And also the article mentions the commercial plan is to use on orbit assembly. But by using the Falcon Heavy or the SLS you could launch the ELA architecture with a single launch.

Still, using two launches of the Delta IV Heavy both at its maximum payload to orbit of 25 mT we could launch the ELA architecture. Even if the Delta IV Heavy is not man rated, we could use separate launchers to take the astronauts to orbit and transfer them to the Moon vehicle after it is assembled.

For the NASA proposal, the article mentions the Lunar Surface Sortie (LSS) proposal. But this was still to use a 4 man capsule, which likely means the large, heavy Orion. It also would involve a separate lunar crew module, also at variance with the lightweight ELA architecture.

This lunar lander of the LSS proposal would then likely be akin to the large, expensive Altair lunar lander. So this proposal would be similar to the Constellation program whose high expense caused it to be cancelled. Better would be if NASA went small following the ELA architecture to use a single, small capsule that would carry the astronauts all the way from LEO to the lunar surface and back again. This would allow a NASA return to the Moon with a proportionally small additional cost above that of the SLS itself, and in less than a decade.

These commercial or NASA missions, if carried through, would allow a return to the Moon by the 50th anniversary of the Apollo missions if not of Apollo 11 itself.

Bob Clark

_________________Nanotechnology now can produce the space elevator and private orbital launchers. It now also makes possible the long desired 'flying cars'. This crowdfunding campaign is to prove it:

It's not enough to only have a round trip payload of a few hundred kilos in under an arbitrary, nostalgic deadline. There is no justification for only putting some more boot prints on the Moon and bring back some more rock samples again as a publicity stunt.

That means being able to land (and return) serious tonnage on the Moon. You can't do that in a single lift even with SLS. In orbit assembly, and reuse of vehicles (ie: real ships) is necessary if we are to avoid the mistakes and dead end architectures of the past.

It would be nice if that RUMINT were true. Unfortunately such plans have been announced periodically for decades with nothing coming from it. Believe it when you see real hardware flying.

Launching huge amounts of infrastructure to a site with a unmanned Maglev gun style launcher, could be brutal and cheap, and have all the sensitive stuff sent with the people in a alternate fashion, this makes the most sense to me, picture a Maglev train enveloped in ceramic, with a high velocity scramjet at its tip, all reusable if need be, but it can be chucked at higher G's then a person, so a short track could be made, but people would require a substantial investment.

a super sonic ramjet right at its contact point at the top of the nose could accelerate and counter drag forces by moving the atmosphere out of the way, plasma bubbles would be nice, by evaporation of heat shield and creating a super-cavity, and accelerating the envelope,but that is just theory, scramjets are proven for getting work from compressing air and its a start, and by accelerating via drag with liquid fuel, just enough to counter drag.... that is not theory.

Can lunar soil be condensed into a concrete like material? A process that could make domes, that are air-locked from material in orbit..... the moon could eventually be the building blocks of a real fleet of actual human colonies in orbit, I wonder if lunar glass is possible either....

_________________Let not the bindings of society hold you back from improving it.... the masses follow where the bold explore.

Can someone with a budget research my plasma supercavity? I have a simulation running in blender, but do not have a method for sublimation, as blender works on solids, not atoms, unless the whole shield starts off as particles, and I just simply don't have the cpu for that, I need to make a solid comprised of particles locked in formation with real bond values,

in short HELP...

A thought I had recently is that the linear electric motors that accelerate the craft along the rails could be built into the train, and be used to accelerate the plasma envelope, and a charged rail style system could be used, so the track would basically be four iron rails and two copper rails, floating above the track is a neat effect, but serious stability will be needed at these speeds, having a super conducting track is nice, but very expensive....

_________________Let not the bindings of society hold you back from improving it.... the masses follow where the bold explore.

It's not enough to only have a round trip payload of a few hundred kilos in under an arbitrary, nostalgic deadline. There is no justification for only putting some more boot prints on the Moon and bring back some more rock samples again as a publicity stunt. That means being able to land (and return) serious tonnage on the Moon. You can't do that in a single lift even with SLS. In orbit assembly, and reuse of vehicles (ie: real ships) is necessary if we are to avoid the mistakes and dead end architectures of the past. It would be nice if that RUMINT were true. Unfortunately such plans have been announced periodically for decades with nothing coming from it. Believe it when you see real hardware flying.

Some sources give the name of this commercial venture as "Golden Spike" and give Peter Diamandis as one the participants. Diamandis of course is one of the chief planners of the asteroid mining venture. If Diamandis is involved in this new venture, then almost certainly part of this plan is to develop lunar propellant resources.

Bob Clark

_________________Nanotechnology now can produce the space elevator and private orbital launchers. It now also makes possible the long desired 'flying cars'. This crowdfunding campaign is to prove it:

Launching huge amounts of infrastructure to a site with a unmanned Maglev gun style launcher, could be brutal and cheap, and have all the sensitive stuff sent with the people in a alternate fashion...

The Navy has already tested rail guns that can launch a 20 kg mass at Mach 7, about 2,100 m/s. What's interesting is that is enough already to launch payloads this size from the lunar surface to lunar orbit. So if we could get the installations generating the power to the lunar surface we could have propellant depots in lunar orbit without the expense of launching this mass from the lunar surface with rockets. In fact to launch it to LEO or to the Lagrange points just takes slightly higher delta-v so we could also launch slightly smaller amounts of propellant to depots at those locations. An additional problem though is the high amount of electrical power required, according to the news reports about 33 megajoules. At 1,000 joules per square meter solar illumination, and, say, 33% efficient solar cells, that's about 100,000 square meters of solar cells, 100m by 1,000m. That's also quite a bit of mass to transport. A small nuclear generating station transported to the Moon could do it but you would have the political problem of launching large amounts of nuclear fuel to space.

Bob Clark

_________________Nanotechnology now can produce the space elevator and private orbital launchers. It now also makes possible the long desired 'flying cars'. This crowdfunding campaign is to prove it:

Launching huge amounts of infrastructure to a site with a unmanned Maglev gun style launcher, could be brutal and cheap, and have all the sensitive stuff sent with the people in a alternate fashion...

An additional problem though is the high amount of electrical power required, according to the news reports about 33 megajoules. At 1,000 joules per square meter solar illumination, and, say, 33% efficient solar cells, that's about 100,000 square meters of solar cells, 100m by 1,000m. That's also quite a bit of mass to transport.

Bob Clark

Aaargh! I made the freshman physics mistake of mixing up my units! The solar insolation is 1,000 watts per square meter not joules! Actually the problem of getting the sufficient power is no problem at all. You see water when broke into separate hydrogen and oxygen has about 16 mega joules of energy per kilo. So 20 kg of hydrolox would have 320 megajoules of energy. So only 1/10th of this energy, at 33 megajoules, would be needed to send this mass to orbit.

Bob Clark

_________________Nanotechnology now can produce the space elevator and private orbital launchers. It now also makes possible the long desired 'flying cars'. This crowdfunding campaign is to prove it:

We are wasting billions of dollars per year on SLS. There are cheaper and nearer term approaches for human space exploration that use existing launch vehicles. A multicenter NASA team has completed a study on how we can return humans to the surface of the moon in the next decade with existing launch vehicles and within the existing budget. This NASA plan, which NASA leadership is trying to hide, would save JSC and create thousands of jobs in Texas.

Since Kraft is opposed to the SLS and he says this plan uses existing launch vehicles, it can’t use the SLS or the Falcon Heavy. It must then use something similar to the ‘Early Lunar Access’ plan that uses orbital assembly, perhaps using two launches of the Delta IV Heavy.Like the suppressed report that suggested orbiting propellant depots could accomplish the goals of the SLS at lower cost, this report will eventually also come out. So whose got the inside scoop?

Bob Clark

_________________Nanotechnology now can produce the space elevator and private orbital launchers. It now also makes possible the long desired 'flying cars'. This crowdfunding campaign is to prove it:

One thing people pushing their own "right" solution (and interests) forget or ignore is that anything connected to NASA isn't about efficiency or even outcomes. It doesn't matter. The space programs, all of NASA, and even all of the US science and technology spending is about political pork distribution in Congress. Who has the best lobbyists and the most facilities in the right places trumps technical solutions.

That won't change until space launch and activity is totally commercial and divorced from government influence. How you get there from here, I do not know. Odds are though, that it won't happen here...